Wednesday, 28 April 2010

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1890 Truman Imperial, Double and SS Stout

Hey, hey, hey. As Krusty would say. The party-gyling fun has spread to Let's Brew Wednesday. And when I say fun, I mean mind-numbing tedium.

We've a thrice [check that's a real word] of Stouts, all magically spun from the same set of grains. If you've managed to stay conscious throuugh my party-gyling posts you'll have a good idea how Truman did that. Not magic, but still an impressive feat of mathematics. They didn't have claulators back in the 1890's. Even if they had, Truman wouldn't have let their brewers use them. Even in the 1970's their brewers had to perform all their calculations on a slate.

That Truman produced so many Stouts (in addition to these three there was also a Running Stout, Keeping Stout and Double Export Stout) is a sign of the popularity of such beers. And a testament to the commercial flexibility provided by party-gyling. A glance at any 19th-century brewery price list will confirm just how widespread a technique it was. How else could a small brewery have 15 different products?

I think that's me about done. There are some party-gyle logs singing like sirens. Excuse me while I go and smash into some rocks . . . . .

Truman - 1890 - Imperial - Double - SS stouts

General info: A wonderful example of how to gyle. This is a set of three big ass stouts made from a single mash. Imperial Brown stout, a double stout and a tasty little (1.070!) SS-type export stout. The sheer volume of this original beer was mindboggling. Over 33,000 gallons of beer! Its literaly unbelivable. You'll be surprised that, although similar, these beers are all quite different and great each in their own right. This is something everyone must try.

Beer Specifics

Recipe by percentages

Gravity (OG)

1.081

38% English pale malt

15.4% Raw sugar

Gravity (FG)

1.019

35.1% Englsih pale malt

0%

ABV

8.21%

10.4% Brown malt

0%

Apparent attenuation

76.06%

1.2% Black malt

Real attenuation

62.31%

IBU

82.0

Mash

120min@152°F

1.3qt/lb

SRM

35

120min@66.7°C

2.73L/kg

EBC

69.4

Boil

2 hours

Homebrew @ 70%

Craft @ 80%

Grist

5gal

19L

10bbl

10hl

English pale malt 1

5.97

lb

2.717

kg

323.81

lb

125.11

kg

Englsih pale malt 2

5.52

lb

2.511

kg

299.26

lb

115.62

kg

Brown malt

1.63

lb

0.743

kg

88.49

lb

34.19

kg

Black malt

0.18

lb

0.083

kg

9.87

lb

3.81

kg

Raw sugar

2.42

lb

1.103

kg

131.40

lb

50.77

kg

15.720

7.157

852.83416

Hops

Goldings 4.5% 120min

4.54

oz

128.8

g

281.57

oz

6.803

kg

Hallertauer Mittelfrüh 3.5% 30min

1.39

oz

39.4

g

86.08

oz

2.080

kg

Goldings 4.5% dry hop

1.72

oz

48.8

g

106.73

oz

2.579

kg

Fermentation

62°F /16.7°C

Yeast

Nottingham ale yeast

1968 London ESB Ale Yeast - WLP002 English Ale Yeast

Tasting Notes: All of the beers are big and dark. A ton of rich brown malt character rather than the black malt of more contemporary stouts. Each is very fruit with a butt ton of hops chucked in. Rum raisins, port, brandie cherries and roast malt tannins. Each can be aged however the IBSt really takes on a life of its own in the bottle.

Imp

5gal

19L

10bbl

10hL

G1 - vol

1.42

5.38

2.83

2.83

G1 - grav

1.113

1.113

1.113

1.113

G1 - BU

127

127

127

127

G2 - vol

0.81

3.07

1.61

1.61

G2 - grav

1.090

1.090

1.090

1.090

G2 - BU

91

91

91

91

G3 - vol

0.28

1.06

0.56

0.56

G3 - grav

1.038

1.038

1.038

1.038

G3 - BU

42

42

42

42

Hopping

1.92oz/gal

14.41g/L

3.73lb/bbl

1.44kg/hL

Totals

OG 1.097

FG 1.022

BU 106

Abv 9.9%

Dbl

5gal

19L

10bbl

10hL

G1 - vol

0.74

2.81

1.48

1.48

G1 - grav

1.113

1.113

1.113

1.113

G1 - BU

127

127

127

127

G2 - vol

1.11

4.22

2.22

2.22

G2 - grav

1.090

1.090

1.090

1.090

G2 - BU

91

91

91

91

G3 - vol

0.65

2.46

1.30

1.30

G3 - grav

1.038

1.038

1.038

1.038

G3 - BU

42

42

42

42

Hopping

1.92oz/gal

14.41g/L

3.73lb/bbl

1.44kg/hL

Totals

OG 1.083

FG 1.017

BU 88.9

Abv 8.8%

SS

5gal

19L

10bbl

10hL

G1 - vol

0.42

1.60

0.84

0.84

G1 - grav

1.113

1.113

1.113

1.113

G1 - BU

127

127

127

127

G2 - vol

0.96

3.66

1.93

1.93

G2 - grav

1.090

1.090

1.090

1.090

G2 - BU

91

91

91

91

G3 - vol

1.11

4.24

2.23

2.23

G3 - grav

1.038

1.038

1.038

1.038

G3 - BU

42

42

42

42

Hopping

1.92oz/gal

14.41g/L

3.73lb/bbl

1.44kg/hL

Totals

OG 1.071

FG 1.014

BU 75.2

Abv 7.5%

5gal

19L

10bbl

10hL

Gyle 1

2.58

9.80

5.16

5.16

Gyle 2

2.88

10.95

5.76

5.76

Gyle 3

2.04

7.76

4.08

4.08

Totals

7.50

28.50

15.00

15.00

Ingredients and technique

Grist & such
Very typical stout grist for the time. Two different pale malts of which only the best malt should be used. A good amount of brown malt with even more sugar added. White sugar can be used but I prefer something with a little more complexity. Invert No2 is great or dark brown muscavado sugar. If you want to do something neat, try using some Gula Jawa. The sugar was added with about 35% of it going into each of the first two gyles and then the remainder going into the last gyle.

Hops
The hops were absolutely fresh being less than a year old. A massive amount of hops went into this thing at nearly 5 pounds per barrel. The dry hopping was also huge with IBSt, Double and SS having around 0.85lb/bbl, 0.5lb/bbl and 0.25lb/bbl. One of the most interesting things with this beer was the use of Bavarian hops. Nearly ¼ of all the hops were Hallertauer-like.
Mash & Boil
There were a ton of small little infusions to keep the temperature up. They started with a short 30min rest at 145F (63C) and then jacked it up to 158F (70C) for two hours. I’ve done both this double rest and a single rest splitting the difference at 152F (67C) and found that there isn’t really that much difference. I found the double rest to add a little more complexity that the single but not overly so. The boil was two hours for the first two gyles and then three hours for the last.

Fermentation, Conditioning & Serving
All these beers were fermented a moderately low temperature and the stronger the stout the more it was aged. Aim for about 2.1 volumes of CO2 using either corn sugar or glucose syrup and around 1 million cells/ ml of beer. Serve at cellar temp per the usual.
Gyling & Blending
We’ve been over gyling many times before the only thing different for this one is that there is a third gyle. Each are sugared, hopped and boiled separately and then blended prefermentation. One of the interesting things in this set of gyles is that Truman, for some reason, did a tiny bit of post-fermentation blending with the three beers. The recipe provided is for the usual amounts with a bit of a twist. When doing any of the volumes the amount of total beer you will get out will be about 50% more (5gal = 7.5gal). Here are the specific breakdowns for each beer with al the numbers and the general amounts by ‘volume’. Good luck!

9 comments:

Gary Gillman
said...

Did they take a first runnings, hop and add sugar, boil, then do the same with a second runnings, then with a third, and blend the worts in different proportions and ferment? Is that it? If so, why is the SG of the three gyles almost the same (the sugar added to each was the same for the first two and lightly under for the third)?

Also, when John Keeling spoke of two mashes instead of three at Fuller, was he possibly referring to making two entire worts (one mashing with full sparge) and then blending those in different proportions for boil and/or fermentation? For this aspect of my question, I am wondering if parti-gyling takes in combining two entire mashes to make at least two different beers. I would think it does.

Gary, I finished these logs last night about 1am so I muffed this bit. The sugar should be as follows: gyle 1 = 0, gyle 2 = 33%, gyle 3 = 67%. This is how they get the numbers nearly identical. This may actually work out to be 40 and 60% depending on your own system. It something that takes hands on work to tailor.

A single mash. Thats the idea. The number of gyles pulled off that mash varies. Each is boiled and hopped separately.

As for Fullers, John correct me if I'm off, they have two gyles, one about 1.080 and one about 1.020. These then get blended as the Golden Pride, ESB, London Pride and Chiswick.

Thanks gents but I don't understand it fully yet. When you say, Ron, mash, underlet and sparge, sparge, sparge, does that mean no further rinsing (flooding to use Randy Mosher's term) occurred on the grains for each wort? Or did they re-immerse the grains with hot water fully after each successive running was pulled off?

There were no breaks. No filling and 'flushing'. The way it usually goes is a few infusions and then sparge. Thats it. You continually sparge all of the extract out and along the way change the 'where' the extract goes. E.g. into different kettles.

Think of it this way. If I have a pitcher of beer and three different size glasses I will fill each of those in turn but just moving the pitcher. Make sense?

Okay I think I see, thanks. I thought spargings were always added to the wort from the first soak for brewing entire, but here it looks like the successive sparges were functionally equal to successive full immersions of the grains since both are run off separately at progressively lower gravities.

I guess what I am wondering is, if you make a mash (one wort) at one gravity and combine it with a mash (one wort) of a different gravity, is that parti-gyling too if only one beer is made? If you make two beers because you combine those mashes in different proportions, is that parti-gyling?

Some of the old logs had multiple mashes and combine them in the way you say. When I say, 'Single mash' what I mean is that they didn't drain the wort, refill and remash. Eg Think toilet. Flush, refill, flush again. Some may not have been absolute continuous sparge but the tun was not emptied.

I found a couple of comments that suggested why this batch sparging (as it's called, except the wort is divided by circulation periodically into the boiling vessels) was done.

One reason is that the rinsing with heated sparge water effectively flushes out the residual sugars, or most of them, in a relatively short time. You don't need to keep the grains sitting in further infusions of hot water for longer to achieve this (so probably a saving of energy and time).

Second, sparging lessens the amount of harsh tannins coming into the wort from the grain husks.